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IRS officials in Washington were involved in investigation of conservative [W:29]

obvious Child said:
Damn straight. More than a few 501(c)4s have been acting as PACs in blatant violation of the law.

There's no law saying the IRS cannot profile.
And the IRS profiles all the time
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. Having a home business gets you profiled. Having large foreign accounts get you profiled.
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Welll ... since 2010 anyway.
 
Fenton said:
Your'e unbelievable.

This House members struck you as incompetent ?

After Shulman when confronted with the question of what he did when he visited the WH 118 times answered " The easter egg roll".
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After Lois Lerner gave a monologue stating her innocence but then immediately after pleaded the Fifth.

Why the pretense ? Why not just explain that your'e irreversibly biased.
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That was in addition to making 'em repeat half of the questions they asked him.
It was like Shulman was giving troll testimony.
 
obvious Child said:
Least bit relevant? Wow. You really don't get this topic at all do you?

When you get off your "Impeach Obama" horse, we can actually talk about the subject.

You are purely here for bashing. The fact that you think PACs are irrelevant to this is really just amazingly ignorant.
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I've never claimed that I want Obama impeached, no not at all. He needs to stick around as he and his ilk are exposed for the frauds and criminals that they are.
 
obvious Child said:
Damn straight. More than a few 501(c)4s have been acting as PACs in blatant violation of the law.

There's no law saying the IRS cannot profile. And the IRS profiles all the time. Having a home business gets you profiled. Having large foreign accounts get you profiled.
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Yes there is law against profiling someone because of their race, CREED, color, RELIGION, or national origin.
 
babilfish said:
It's kind of sad how clueless conservatives are. I mean, I'm still not exactly sure what the scandal here is, that the IRS rightly applied more scrutiny to teabaggers last election season?
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Exactly. The Tea Party movement was/is a mixed bag of astroturf and grassroots organizations. The Tea Party Patriots organization, for example, was/is undeniably an astroturf organization being funded and run by FreedomWorks. Yeah, I've heard the Tea Party supporters' annecdotes that they showed up at a meeting or rally organized by, for example, the Tea Party Patriots with random people who hadn't participated in politics before milling around, but the man behind the curtain was actually FreedomWorks.

Astroturfing has serious implications for tax exempt eligibility and the frequency of Tea Party organizations masquerading as grassroots may explain why the term was placed on the IRS list. Of course, the rational explanation is completely ignored and people immediately start wailing about scandal. That said, it doesn't help that the IRS doesn't want to talk about it.
 
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obvious Child said:
Damn straight. More than a few 501(c)4s have been acting as PACs in blatant violation of the law.

There's no law saying the IRS cannot profile. And the IRS profiles all the time. Having a home business gets you profiled. Having large foreign accounts get you profiled.
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Really? So they could start auditing all young black males and there would be no problem? And you say other people dont understand this issue?

Profiling based upon resources is not the same as profiling based upon the equal protection laws regarding affiliation and civil rights.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Profiling based upon resources is not the same as profiling based upon the equal protection laws regarding affiliation and civil rights.
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Can you prove that this was politically motivated profiling? All we've seen so far is a Republican dominated Congressional committee operating under the unsubstantiated assumption that it was. I haven't seen a single shred of evidence pertaining to why "Tea Party" was included in this list and there is a perfectly rational and legitimate explanation for why it would have been. People keep getting carried away merely at the idea of "Tea Party" being on a list of, as yet, unknown other keywords for special consideration. It doesn't automatically mean that the IRS did something wrong or illegal; what matters is the reason why it was on that list.
 
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Napoleon said:
Can you prove that this was politically motivated profiling? All we've seen so far is a Republican dominated Congressional committee operating under the unsubstantiated assumption that it was. I haven't seen a single shred of evidence pertaining to why "Tea Party" was included in this list and there is a perfectly rational and legitimate explanation for why it would have been. People keep getting carried away merely at the idea of "Tea Party" being on a list of, as yet, unknown other keywords for special consideration. It doesn't automatically mean that the IRS did something wrong or illegal; what matters is the reason why it was on that list.
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All you say is true which makes the counter in this case also true, can you prove it was not politically motivated profiling? And yes 'what matters is the reason why it was on that list' but unfortunately no one to date either knows anything(ridiculously) OR is willing to talk. Time will tell...
 
chicago trib editorial board, today:

IRS stonewalling makes the case for a special prosecutor - chicagotribune.com

With their stonewalling, claimed ignorance and convenient amnesia, Internal Revenue Service officials make it difficult for Americans to comprehend the depth, but also the official awareness, of their agency's evident assault on free speech. IRS targeting of conservative groups for extraordinary scrutiny, intrusive demands for information from them, and long delays in processing their paperwork, served two ends, unwittingly or by intent: to thwart the groups' fundraising by delaying their tax-exempt status, and to intimidate them from exercising their First Amendment rights.

Who put this sorry operation in motion? Was the IRS merely looking for ways to cope with more applications for its valuable tax-exempt imprimatur than its staff could process? Or was someone pushing the agency to hassle groups unfriendly to the government — or to the incumbent Democratic administration — as a presidential election approached?

Asking these questions isn't a coy suggestion that we have answers. We do, though, know that truthful responses from Lois Lerner could get all of us much closer to those answers. Same for Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller, past IRS commissioners who, unlike Lerner, haven't invoked a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Shulman and Miller are testifying. But they just didn't know much, just can't remember much, about their agency's targeting operation.

Add to this the White House's evolving story of who knew what, when, about illicit IRS activity and you reach this scandal's two bedrock issues. One is the origin and extent of the targeting. The other is how high in the Obama administration knowledge of this operation reached before voters cast their ballots for the Nov. 6 election. On Friday the IRS inspector general testified that in June 2012, five months before the election, he told top Treasury Department officials of his probe into the targeting. Maybe the word stopped there. Certainly, nobody clued in rank-and-file citizens about IRS treatment of conservative groups that might have influenced their votes.

The context: Tea party and other conservative groups had assisted a Republican victory wave in the 2010 congressional election. Democrats understandably feared a repeat in 2012. That concern likely animated Democratic senators who, during the 2012 cycle, urged the IRS to examine the tax-exempt status of these groups, some of which had huge war chests. The White House, too, complained about big-money conservative groups.

At the same time, the IRS was assuring noisy Republican members of Congress that, contrary to complaints from the conservative groups, the agency wasn't subjecting them to inordinate scrutiny. That assurance was incorrect. Worse, even when they learned about the targeting, neither Shulman nor Miller corrected their previous denials to the Congress. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said at a Tuesday hearing: "Commissioner Miller, that's a lie by omission. ... Why did you mislead me and my colleagues?" To which Miller replied, "I did not lie, Sir."

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation of the targeting, and of whether IRS officials misled members of Congress who asked about it. But given the political overtones, many Americans won't be much interested in what one arm of the Obama administration concludes about the conduct of other arms — the IRS, the Treasury and possibly the White House.

The evasiveness of IRS officials makes the case for a special prosecutor to conduct this inquiry, much as then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald investigated (and convicted of perjury and other offenses) Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Given the gravity of this scandal and the we-saw-nothing attitude that IRS officials project, Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a prosecutor, aka special counsel.

We've been skeptical of special prosecutors who succumbed to temptations of mission creep and vague deadlines. But there are times when only a special prosecutor has the independence and credibility to resolve a politically fraught matter.

With each day, the IRS fiasco only grows curiouser — as do the American people.

We don't begrudge Lerner her privilege under the Fifth Amendment.

We're equally concerned, though, about groups eager to invoke their First Amendment privilege — only to have their federal government push back.
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don't you sometimes feel apart?

is that partly why you're so pissed?

party proud, progressives
 
Napoleon said:
Can you prove that this was politically motivated profiling? All we've seen so far is a Republican dominated Congressional committee operating under the unsubstantiated assumption that it was. I haven't seen a single shred of evidence pertaining to why "Tea Party" was included in this list and there is a perfectly rational and legitimate explanation for why it would have been. People keep getting carried away merely at the idea of "Tea Party" being on a list of, as yet, unknown other keywords for special consideration. It doesn't automatically mean that the IRS did something wrong or illegal; what matters is the reason why it was on that list.
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Which is why its suspicious Lerner is taking the fifth, especially in light of her actions at the FEC.
We dont know as yet, because the decision makers arent talking and the administration is stonewalling. Kind of makes the case that there is something to hide.
 
Napoleon said:
Can you prove that this was politically motivated profiling? All we've seen so far is a Republican dominated Congressional committee operating under the unsubstantiated assumption that it was. I haven't seen a single shred of evidence pertaining to why "Tea Party" was included in this list and there is a perfectly rational and legitimate explanation for why it would have been. People keep getting carried away merely at the idea of "Tea Party" being on a list of, as yet, unknown other keywords for special consideration. It doesn't automatically mean that the IRS did something wrong or illegal; what matters is the reason why it was on that list.
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No one has denied that conservative organizations weren't targeted - even the IRS - that is proof enough. Hell, the heads of the IRS are blaming "low level rogue IRS agents" for this fiasco.

Lois Lerner is pleading the Fifth - that should speak volumes.
 
This scandal is just like Benghazi and the media scandal - they're are all the same. No one knows anything yet the evidence points to the fact that everyone involved knows something.

However I really wouldn't expect progressives to even care, and these scandals are far worse than Watergate, yet the progressive MSM pays little attention. Oh and allegedly the media is not biased?

Yeah, watch C-SPAN and tell me there is no scandal.

All I see are a bunch of bureaucrats attempting to save their jobs with answers like: "I'm not aware of what happens under my presence" or "I plea the Fifth." When people use language like that its obvious they damn well know more than what they're letting on - and what they know wont vindicate them.
 
Even liberal sources are not buying the frantic excuses of Lord Obama, and his criminal apostles....

A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner - The Washington Post

Plus we know now that this isn't Lerner's first time discriminating against people she ideologically detests....

Lois Lerner’s past history may be catching up with her. She’s in trouble right now because of her role in the IRS scandal but the practices she employed while head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is also raising some red flags. It appears that she doesn’t necessarily have a fondness for conservative Christian groups.

We already know that besides Tea Party groups, the IRS asked a religious pro-life group to details information about their prayers and religious activity. Well, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that this was coming under Lerner’s watch. Why? In turns out that when Lerner headed up the Enforcement Office of the FEC in the 1990’s, they brought a lawsuit against the Christian Coalition and during the process, many of the FEC attorneys asked invasive questions centering on personal faith and prayer practices. They made the Christian Coalition jump through hoop after hoop to try and prove that they were not coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with public officials running for office.

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“The FEC conducted a large amount of paper discovery during the administrative investigation and then served four massive discovery requests during the litigation stage that included 127 document requests, 32 interrogatories, and 1,813 requests for admission. Three of the interrogatories required the Coalition to explain each request for admission that it did not admit in full, for a total of 481 additional written answers that had to be provided. The Coalition was required to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of them containing sensitive and proprietary information about finances and donor information. Each of the 49 state affiliates were asked to provide documents and many states were individually subpoenaed. In all, the Coalition searched both its offices and warehouse, where millions of pages of documents are stored, in order to produce over 100,000 pages of documents.”

Lois Lerner's Lawsuit Crusade Against Christian Coalition?
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More here:

IRS's Lerner Had History of Harassment, Inappropriate Religious Inquiries at FEC | The Weekly Standard

This is a vile woman, radical leftist that should be no where near power in Washington D.C.

The hypocrisy, and utter disregard for law, and the Constitution to achieve their ends is jaw droppingly stunning....For this woman to try a stunt like she did in congress, giving her plea of innocence, then pleading the 5th is a real misunderstanding of fundamental fairness, and the law....I hope they bring her back, and compel her to either testify, or go to jail.

Also, we know that the WH counsel, and the Chief of Staff were also aware of this, and they need to testify as well....Should they try and plead the 5th, or hide behind Executive privilege...All hell will break loose.

Finally, A select committee needs to be convened now. This administration is, has been, and will continue to be criminally corrupt if we allow this to pass without serious consequences....
 
Fenton said:
If it's just a case of misunderstanding, if we're " too stupid to understand" why didn't Ms Lerner just explain it to us ?
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I don't know, ask her?
 
babilfish said:
I don't know, ask her?
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:roll: That's your answer? Really? A woman that has a track record of this exact sort of harassment, and wrong doing, trying to assert her right to not speak, while at the same time proclaiming her innocence, and refusing to step down? You mean ask that dishonest piece of crap anything?

Good grief.
 
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